VLBA Radio Telescope at Night under the Milky Way Galaxy, Owens Valley, California

The Owens Valley is home to a variety of radio telescopes. This particular radio telescope, photographed with the Milky Way galaxy rising above it in the night sky, is part of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a system of ten widely spaced radio telescopes that make certain forms of high resolution interferometry possible. The VLBA radio telescopes, which are each about 10 stories high when pointed straight up, range from Hawaii in the west to New Hampshire in the east. The VLBA radio telescopes are controlled from a central location in New Mexico. Large amounts of observational data are recorded at each VLBA telescope site, then sent to a single data processing lab where they are pooled and analyzed on very powerful computers.

Radio telescope antenna, part of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) is a system of ten radio telescopes which are operated remotely from their Array Operations Center located in Socorro, New Mexico, as a part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). These ten radio antennas work together as an array that forms the longest system in the world that uses very long baseline interferometry.Image ID: 28787Location: Big Pine, California, USA